Chatter

FISHY BEHAVIOR
To Maria Belio, the enigmatic Viggo Mortensen's still waters don't just run deep—they're rife with wildlife. "Viggo is obsessed with fish," says Bello, 38, of her History of Violence costar. No word, though, on if he loved the piscine-themed decor a secret interior designer created for him. Says Bello: "I'm happy to say, on the last day of shooting he walked into his trailer and saw a three-foot dead fish hanging from his chandelier. I'm not at liberty to say how it got there. But I'm very proud of it."

CELEBRITY RANT: MATT DAMON HAS BEN AFFLECK'S BACK
"It's like the VH1 [Behind the Music] experience on steroids: 'He hits! He's down! Now he's up again!' Maybe through some fault of his own Ben hasn't made the best choices in the last couple of years. But when his next movie comes out and it's great, everyone will say, 'It's a comeback.' And it's like, 'A comeback? What are you talking about?' Some people are afraid to lose [celebrity status] and so they start making really safe choices. I don't want that. If I go down, I'll go down swinging. Ben feels the same way."

HELENA: NO CLOUT
"I don't have to sleep with a guy to get a part. Actually, it's quite the opposite," says Helena Bonham Carter, of voicing the title role in beau Tim Burton's new animated comedy Corpse Bride. "I said, 'I want to play the Corpse Bride.' He thought about it, and said, 'You know what? I'm thinking...Did I ask... Would you ever...?' He said all these abandoned sentences. I said, 'You want me to audition, don't you?' And he said, 'Yeah,'" says the British actress, 39. "So I auditioned. Two weeks later he said very solemnly, 'We would be honored if you would consider playing the role of the Corpse Bride.' It was like a sweet marriage proposal."

LAURA'S PHANTOM OF THE THEATER
Even before Laura Linney's horror film The Exorcism of Emily Rose, the actress had a brush with the supernatural. "I saw a ghost while [rehearsing] a play at New York's Belasco Theater," says Linney, 41. "I looked up and in the upper balcony was a woman in a blue satin dress with blonde crimped hair. It didn't scare me. I turned, did my line and when I looked back, she was gone. I told the house manager, 'I saw a ghost' He said, 'Blue dress, blonde hair? Yeah, you did.'" Not everyone is as unruffled as Linney. "The theater is famously haunted. [Producer] David Belasco supposedly shows up," she says. "So the Con Ed guys won't go in the basement."